Intervention Less Ordinary

Former Secretary of State Madeleleine Albright had an excellent editorial in today's New York Times called "The End of Intervention" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/opinion/11albright.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin). In it, she makes the case that the Bushite invasion of Iraq has undermined the internationalists' case for intervening in the affairs of nation-states, no matter how awful they act (particularly when it relates to outrages within their borders).

Not that she thinks the international community should not act; just that the practice appears in disrepute, and the organizational framework to do something is not present.

I have a fairly radical suggestion about what US should do in the short run, and one (that is not really so radical, but is off the agenda) for the long run, too.

Just Bump 'em Off

First, in the cases of Burma (or Myanmar, call it what you will) and Zimbabwe, I advocate covert assassination as our means to change the government. As a choice of means, this will not be popular, and I am not advocating this as the official policy of the US government. I just say, get it done, using a trained team of disaffected nationals of those countries, with all the deniability possible to develop.

Assassination as a tactic used secretly by governments is never acknowledged, but who can deny that it is out there? The history is not complete (and may never be), but there is pretty strong evidence that unsuccessful CIA efforts to knock off Castro resulted in Castro's successful employment of Lee Harvey Oswald to get JFK.

OK, perhaps a bad example of why we should do it. The one rule, back in the age of kings, was: no regicide! Bad policy, they thought. Those were states on an equal moral footing, though; much as I detest Bushite Misrule, it's not down on the Mugabe/SLORC level. A few well-placed hits, and those regimes would crumple. Both countries also have well-formed democratic opposition groups that would be able to fill the vacuum quickly. I should also point out that these groups have been suffering serious loss of life and freedom from their tyrannical rulers. There is a strong utilitarian argument that taking out just a few of these bastards will save thousands of innocents, one reinforced by recent developments in Myanmar after their cyclone and in Zimbabwe after their elections.

National Sovereignty Is Not Sacrosanct

This is the truth that Albright believes, too, but she will not say it. The "responsibility to protect" philosophy is all well and good, but it's meaningless if not backed up by a willingness to do something. And I mean something that cuts through the B.S. of moral outrage and paper sanctions.

This is certainly not an all-purpose, all-dictator approach--it must be used selectively. In North Korea, for example, the tyranny is nearly as bad, but the control is deep and wide, and there is no viable opposition that would benefit. Knocking off Saddam Hussein would merely have put another Saddamite in the driver's seat (couldn't resist it). In Sudan, there's a complex mix of tribes, racial minorities, and, as in Saddam's Iraq, a dominant minority group that will hold on to power by any means, so one or a few bad guys getting taken out would not produce a desired outcome.

The Long-Term Approach

Clearly our international institutions need to be strengthened, and there should be some empowerment to take action in the most egregious cases. Our federal government will inevitably oppose anything that would undermine its position as the unchallenged supreme power on the planet, but in this case, it is acting on its behalf and not on ours.

It should start with revision of the U.N. Charter, and that should start with bringing the Security Council into the post-post-war era. I'm talking about World War II!--Nothing has changed in the S.C. since the immediate post-war period, except that the Nationalist Chinese were replaced by the Communists. We need about 5 new permanent members, 4-6 semi-permanent ones, and removal of the veto, except for actions directly against the nation itself. As I've suggested before, we should move the Security Council out of New York, to an undivided Jerusalem under international jurisdiction.